Tim McGraw’s Next Album ‘Really Talks a Lot About Life’

In November, it will be five years since Tim McGraw last released a solo album. During that time, he put a collaborative project with his wife, Faith Hill, and toured with her, switched record labels twice and dropped a couple of singles that fans hoped were signs of a full album to come.

This time around, following the release of his brand-new single "I Called Mama," they're right. Now back with Big Machine Label Group, his label home from the spring of 2012 until an early 2017 signing with Sony Music Nashville, McGraw says he's preparing for a new record in September.

"The songs are done, although I've got a bad habit of always listening to three or four new songs from songwriters every day," McGraw recently told The Boot and other media members during a video call. "So I say it's done, but you never know with me; I might go into the studio at any moment."

As long as he doesn't find any more songs that should be in the running for the album, McGraw says now all he's got to do is listen: "The process now is just listening, listening, listening, trying to cut it down to a moderate amount of songs," he explains.

"I've got so many songs that I love," McGraw confesses, "and with every album I cut, there's always three or four left on the table that, gosh, I wish I would have made it."

McGraw's new record -- reportedly titled Here on Earth, after a song that McGraw says "tells a story from start to finish ... about meeting for the first time and having kids and what life's like, and what the meaning of life is here on Earth" -- will move between the traditional and the more modern, he says.

"The album itself really talks a lot about life, a lot about life circumstances, in a big way and a small way," McGraw notes. "So I think that I really got a pretty wide scope [stylistically] on this record. There's a couple that are really traditional, actually: There's one that's a real sort of throwback to Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell."

Further details about the release of McGraw's new album have not yet been announced.